


Nacreous Nectarine

by Swagreus (shiplizard)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: A lot of throwaway villains die, Bureaucracy, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Early Overwatch as a bit of a gong show, Fake Geography, Gen, Muslim Character written by non-Muslim author, Non-Consensual Drug Use, POV Outsider, PTSD, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Racism, Undercover Missions, Video game science, Welsh Character written by non-Welsh author, Workplace comedy ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 00:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14225499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/Swagreus
Summary: The questionable mission practices and questionable hiring practices of Overwatch, as seen by one unfortunate bystander who got in the middle of a mission.Featuring the undercover talents of one Cmdr. Gabriel Reyes, former theater nerd, current terrifying one-man assault team.[Based on the art of Kelly Turnbull/Coelasquid]





	Nacreous Nectarine

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Theater Kid Gabriel Reyes](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/368754) by Coelasquid. 



It was the army got him used to routine. He was good at it. Long after he’d lapsed in most other respects he was still praying five times daily just because he was used to it. The omnics used to push the front on a schedule. Near anything’s tolerable if it’s routine.

Near anything but not everything. The shakes are a regular occurrence every other day and he’s still not any better at dealing with those. His hip aches like a rain storm’s coming, but the weather’s as perfect as ever. He could do with a bit of rain, see all the tourists as miserable and run-down as he feels.

They’ve got that poor boy in the basement and he’ll be needed to keep him alive, too, that’s another thing that routine hasn’t made easier.

“Dave? Peaches?”

Daff shakes himself out of it, because hell’s to pay if he’s caught neglecting a client. He still feels half out of his body. The open-air lobby’s at just slightly the wrong angle and the sound of all the decorative fountains is menacing.

“Sorry, Carlos, love. I’m off with the fairies,” he says, rounding it out into Received Pronunciation. There’s a high-end persona he’s expected to maintain with the guests, and Americans don’t associate Wales with-- well, much of anything, but probably especially not dietary consultations.

“Obviously you aren’t, or you’d be paying attention to me,” Carlos teases, giving him a gentle swat on the hand and a sunny smile. “What’s wrong?”

“Just woolgathering. We were talking about the new juice fast you were thinking of trying?”

“Mm, no. The house.”

“Right, the house.”

“You let me talk about the fireplace for twenty minutes.” Carlos lays a hand on his wrist. “Nobody wants to hear about the fireplace for twenty minutes. Something’s wrong.”

“That’s new polish, isn’t it?”

Carlos preens briefly, twirling the string of his cropped hoodie the better to show off his manicure, a pearly gold that sets off his lovely dark skin. “Nacreous Nectarine. But don’t change the subject.”

“I’m having an off day. This isn’t what you’re paying for, let me comp you something from the bar. Your favorite is the acai smoothie, isn’t it?”

“Oh, you can’t do that. Hearing about imported brick is worth my money, you’re my house therapist.”

He’s a kind boy. Gay as a lamb in spring and vainer than a peacock but Carlos is a gentle soul. Daff doubts he’s ever committed a graver sin than wasting his husband’s money on homeopathic remedies and cucumber facials. Talking with him’s a pleasure, really, a view into a kinder world than the one Daff lives in.

“I’ve got a regular nutritionist back in Los Angeles anyway,” Carlos adds. “She doesn’t do massage, though, that’s why you’re my favorite.”

“Are you booked today, then?” Daff hides his panic. He could have sworn. He didn’t think he was so far into the dip that his memory was off.

“No, honey, just in general. You look awful. You need a day. When do these slave drivers let you off? ”

The sleek little resort-issue pager at his hip buzzes into life.

“Not right now. No rest for the wicked, darling. Tell Em at the front not to charge you for today’s consultation.”

Carlos clicks his tongue.

“Get some rest as soon as you can, okay? And grab something from the juice bar on my tab.”

“That’s very kind.” He slips out of the little bamboo-screen nook, scrubbing his hand across his face. He’s starting to sweat and all. He’ll need a fix sooner rather than later.

It’s shameful, what the outfit charges these poor rich idiots to listen to him talk nonsense about cleansing. As if nonexistent doses of activated charcoal in sugar-laced smoothies could somehow outdo the human liver. He’s been certified in everything from acupuncture to whatever bloody quackery starts with z these days. Who’d have thought it would come to this?

He wishes that quackery was all that was on his soul, though. The tingle in his veins is a reminder of worse mistakes, and his own sins await him through the employee access only door and down in the boiler room.

Lyndon is waiting for him inside the door.

“You look terrible, Mister Yavuz,” he says conversationally. “You can’t be seen in public like this. Here, we’re a little late on your wages, aren’t we?”

So kind. So polite. His eyes are reptilian behind his smile and they make Daff shudder. He looks like the rest of his ilk-- they’re not the White Syndicate out of some sort of racial pride, he thinks it’s a surname, but the higher ups do all manage to look like they’re in the same line of fashion dolls.

Lyndon produces a little cigarette case, pops it open so that Daff can see the hypodermic in it, and then closes it again. His mouth goes dry and he hates it.

“Just one little thing.”

“Our guest, is it?” his accent is shambling back toward Swansea. The doses aren’t lasting like they used to; he’s a trained medical man, he can tell his tolerance is shifting. And they’re keeping him on an irregular schedule, he’s all but sure, to keep his system hungry. They’re digging him deeper into dependency.

“Our young friend is coming down worryingly hard. Make sure he stays alive and talking, won’t you?”

Of course. It was either the boy in the basement or one of the toughs injured in a turf war-- and there’s been a quiet truce in the underworld recently. So.

“Right, boss. Happy to, boss.” Get fucked, boss. Daff goes for his medical kit.

It’s stifling down in the sublevels, the ventilation fans just stirring stale air around; air conditioning costs money that the outfit doesn’t believe in spending on blue collar workers. Daff sheds his resort-issued overshirt because he can’t afford to sweat through it when he’s got a full slate booked in the resort this evening.

The prisoner is sitting against a support beam in the boiler room. He’s upright mostly because of the chain around his neck and the cuffs pinning his arms behind the beam; he doesn’t look like he has energy to move. Then again they’ve underestimated him more than once; he caught Mister Drake a kick on the face yesterday and now they’ve chained his legs as well.

A beauty of a kick, it was. The boy deserves a medal for it.

There’s no new bruises today, by the looks of it, though Daff will have to check under his stained shirt and filthy trousers to make sure. His employers might not have gone to the trouble of working him over this time, though. Not when the comedown off Volte is torture enough.

The boy gave his name as Ennio Martinez when he applied for a janitorial position, and that’s the name that came back off his prints, but Daff still suspects it’s not his own. He’s too well trained, too resilient against the Syndicate’s questioning to be the junior level errandboy that his record paints him as. Lyndon thinks he’s a spy for a rival outfit on the mainland, but that doesn’t ring true either.

Possibly-Ennio lifts his head when the door opens, fixes him with a pitiful brown-eyed puppy-dog’s stare.

“Howdy, doc,” he rasps. “Bring me a lollipop today?”

He can’t get attached to the poor fool; he averts his eyes from the lopsided smile.

“Shut up.”

“You look ‘bout as bad as I feel,” possibly-Ennio remarks, as Daff crouches to take his pulse. Racing and thunderous; he barely has to touch the boy’s neck to feel it. The vein’s practically throbbing.

_Our patient today is a young latino male, reportedly twenty-two. Symptoms presenting; paleness, convulsive shaking, tachycardia, hypertension--_

“Ow, I know I ain’t dreaming, you ain’t gotta pinch—”

_\--Lack of skin elasticity, depressed body temperature, still sweating at least. Likely diagnosis: four days in a fucking boiler room being injected with a shiny new recreational painkiller between rounds of friendly questioning. Suggested treatment: sod if I know, you poor little bugger, you don’t deserve this and it’d be a mercy just to let you go. Maybe I’ll find the balls to do it, too._

“You’re dehydrated. This is going to get even worse if you don’t drink something.” There’s a pitcher of water where the kid can’t reach it; Daff lifts it and the chain around the prisoner’s neck jingles as he swallows convulsively. His eyes flick to the side, and Daff sees what he’d taken for a piece of crumpled paper at first. A wet towel, rather.

“Pissed someone off again, did you?”

“S’talent of mine,” Ennio slurs.

He’s a brave little bastard, you’ve got to give him that; he gulps down the water without flinching again. Daff has to hold the pitcher back so that he doesn’t guzzle it.

“You won’t like it if you vomit.”

“Aw, hell, doc, at some point things just stop getting worse.”

“They don’t, though,” Daff says soberly.

“Hands’re shaking,” Ennio says, and it takes Daff a second to realize that Ennio’s not talking about himself. He’s talking about Daff’s hands, jittering enough to make the water in the pitcher slosh. “They keep you on a short leash.”

“Shut up.”

“That tattoo a’ yours. RAMC.” He drawls it out ‘Arr-ayy-emm-see.’

“What’s a little hooligan from the States know about it?”

“Boss had me memorize all the medical corps insignias. Said it’s bad luck to shoot at medics.”

“They’re probably listening in on us. Word to the wise.” Shut your mouth, Daffyd tries to convey with his eyes.

Ennio’s chains start to jingle softly as a shaking fit hits him. Daffyd aches in sympathy.

“Might be. Maybe they think you’re too far down the hole to help a poor boy, though.”

“They’d be right.”

“I don’t think they are. You were a combat medic, and that’s no job for the faint a’heart. Served in the crisis, right? Got that metal leg of yours.”

“Boating accident,” Daff lies briskly, checking Ennio’s pulse again. Still pounding like a horse on a track, but not getting worse. If he had his way he’d put the boy on a saline drip, but he hasn’t had his way in a long while.

“Nah. Nah, that scar on your collarbone. One ’at looks like a burn. That’s a plasma blade scar. You met an OR14 real close, didn’t’cha?”

It takes him by surprise; he sucks in a breath, reeling. Nobody here knows about that. The Syndicate don’t care how he lost the leg. He can nearly smell the skin burning again. He just missed getting his head taken off, but the second swing—his leg came off like he was a Christmas goose.

Daff grabs the little shit by his shirt collar. “Who the fuck do you work for?” he hisses.

“Boss’s got a couple like it.”

He wants to think that Ennio’s delirious, but there’s something terribly lucid about the boy’s eyes.

“You help me get out, he’d get you out too.”

“There’s no ‘out’. You don’t get off of Volte, you poor stupid little bugger. Not one-in-ten survives the withdrawal and the ones who do have such bad nerve damage they wish they were one of the other nine.”

“I know an angel,” Ennio slurs, and drops his head back against the support beam.

No more lucidity for Ennio. Might be a blessing. He’s going to have to hang a saline drip and to hell with his keepers if they don’t like it. They want the boy alive, he needs fluids in him.

He spends a good hour making sure Ennio doesn’t dislodge the tubing he jams into him, waits for his vitals to stabilize a bit before he bandages up the arm. He leaves the boy chained to the pillar and doesn’t look back.

Ennio’s strange insight haunts him for the rest of the day, and not even Lyndon dispensing his long-denied hit can chase off the unease. What rival gang trained their runners in military insignia? Who does the brat work for?

Is there a chance in hell they’re actually the miracle workers Ennio thinks they are? Could they really get him out?

On day five of Ennio’s imprisonment, Daff isn’t called down to the basement for him. He tries not to worry about that. Maybe they managed not to do much harm to him today, maybe that’s all. It’s easier not to think about it, while he’s still on the upswell of the Volte, and all the angles are right again and sounds are functioning as they ought to. It’s easier not to dwell.

Well. Easier to hide it, anyway.

Carlos does have a massage booked that evening, and Daff is put together enough not to alarm the poor dear again. No shaking hands to give him away. He focuses on the healthy body below him, glowing and perfect, and not the memory of Ennio in the basement.

“Not too hard, okay?”

“Of course, love,” Daff soothes, easing up even further, more stroking than rubbing Carlos’ angular back now.

Funny for such a huge, sculpted man to be such a creampuff, but Carlos has confided that most of the bulk is silicon. He’d be the envy of anyone even without it, but that’s not a line the resort would like Daff to push. After all, rich tourists chasing impossible bodies and impossible highs keep the place running.

Carlos is older than he wants anyone to think he is, but Daff will give his surgeon this—he can’t tell _how_ much older.

“Deep breath… and we’re done.”

“Mmm.” Carlos stretches hugely, only barely waiting for Daff to turn away before he slides out from under the sheet. “You’re a miracle worker, babe. I keep telling my boyfriend to come see you, but he’s busy with the bullshit with the home inspectors. You know how it is.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t have the foggiest, but he’s heard enough of Carlos’ bitter cellphone arguments to fake it, at least. Something’s holding up the deal on this dreamhouse of theirs, with the imported brick fireplace and what have you. The boyfriend is dead set on waiting for things to resolve, and Carlos wants to move now. That’s all you need to know to have a perfectly sympathetic conversation with him.

He leaves Carlos to get dressed, fetches him his complimentary coconut water, comes back and knocks on the massage room door.

“I’m not decent,” Carlos coos. “But I am dressed,” he adds, swinging open the door and winking at Daff.

“Stunning,” Daff says fondly, as if today’s track pants and cropped hoody were couture. They’re pink today; they don’t quite match the nail polish, but Carlos makes it work off of sheer stubbornness and sunshine. “Walk you to the lobby?”

“Thanks, peaches.” Carlos takes his offered arm.

The resort’s quieter in the evenings; all the guests who can’t afford to actually stay in the criminally overpriced guestrooms have been chased out, so that the very-very-rich can enjoy a little leisure time unhindered by the only-very-rich.

“Is that the news?” Carlos asks, craning his head as they pass reception.

“That’s odd,” Daff murmurs. They usually have it showing waterscapes or an advert for the resort’s services. Someone’s tuned it to the Beeb, and the crawl below the announcer says

 

 

> **Overwatch targeting drug traffic on Isle d’Ivoire.**

“Give me a mo, dear, will you?” Daff breathes, drawn to the television.

“Sure thing. I need to make a call anyway.”

Daff turns out the volume without thinking about it. Lyndon must be shitting himself somewhere right now.

“ _-South African government has signed this ground-breaking pact with the international watchdog group after days of discussion with the UN. Overwatch’s charter was initially restricted to policing omnic terrorism, but in the years since its founding they have expanded to a wide variety of research and peacekeeping missions. This will be the first time that they turn their efforts toward human-led organized crime, and many wonder if-_

“Why do you think I’m mad, _pumpkin_ ,” he can hear Carlos practically spitting into the phone.

“ _-an overreach in jurisdiction. Our field reporter Eleni Assad is on site, where Strike Commander Morrison is just getting out of the hearing-_ ” The screen cuts to the interior of a government building where the man in question is fending off reporters with one hand, holding an earpiece in place with the other.

“We’ve been waiting on this deal for days and I find out like this? On fucking _television?_ ” The last word is almost a shout.

On screen, a second later, Strike Commander Morrison doesn’t quite flinch away from a loud noise in his earpiece. He waves away a journo and steps back, muttering furiously.

“...yeah, I believe it. Figures. No, just right now. BBC5.”

Daff feels a chill go down his spine. Carlos’s sunny, sing-song voice is changing, losing its warmth. It’s a rough monotone he’s not heard before.

“No. I’m extracting _now._ It’s been five days already.”

Daff is only passable at reading lips, but he’d swear that what Morrison says, on screen, as his Aryan-blue eyes widen, is ‘Gabriel, no’

“Gabriel yes,” says Carlos behind him, and the soft tic of a perfectly manicured finger tapping the ‘disconnect’ button is deafening.

Daff freezes in place, afraid to look around.

There’s another soft tic, another button pressed.

Something in the general vicinity of the secondary breaker room explodes. And then something toward the west end of the complex.

As the screams begin, Daff whirls, meets a gaze so cold it takes the wind out of him. His client's expressive face is suddenly a blank mask, the pretty muscular body suddenly squared up and solid. Still the same pink hoody, cropped up to the belly, still the same slight gloss on the lips, but it's as if Carlos has stepped away and been replaced by someone entirely else. 

Someone who sets off explosives with their phone and gets calls from Strike Commander Morrison. 

“You should leave,” says probably-not-Carlos-then.

“You’re the kid’s boss. Aren’t you.”

The slightest cant of not-Carlos’ chin invites him to go on.

“He said you could help. I can take you to him.”

The fire suppression systems kick on, spitting chemical particulate down onto them. Daff raises a hand to shield his eyes; not-Carlos just ignores it.

“He’s below-stairs. They’ll already have locked some of the fire doors, but I know how to get around them.”

“I’ll need to detour through the locker room.”

“What, for a bloody shower?” Daff asks, bewilderment taking hold in all his vowels.

Not-Carlos gives him a grim smile. “Left something there.”

It’s almost a run to keep up with the man, in his pretty pink trainers and his pretty pink clothes and with the loping stride of a bloody wolf or something. Daff keeps an eye out as they speed-walk through the resort; he hasn’t seen any of the syndicate and it’s worrying him.

“They’ve got a private security force could populate a small town, they’ll be on us any second.”

Not-Carlos chuckles. It’s a terrifying sound. “I’m looking forward to it.”

They stop into the locker room, where not-Carlos gets his fingers behind the bank of security-grade steel bank-style lockers and pulls the whole fucking thing away from the wall.

‘All my bulk is silicon’ Daffyd’s partially cyborg arse.

“…they ran your prints,” he says helplessly. “They run everyone’s prints? You’re meant to be a house husband from Beverly Hills.”

Not-Carlos reaches into the space between the lockers and the wall, into a hole he must have put there himself, and comes out with a black bag. From which he extracts two _fucking shotguns_ , Americans and their guns, a pair of actual shotguns. And a very fashionable belt of extra ammunition that he drapes around his hips jauntily.

“This isn’t amateur hour. I didn’t come in with my real prints,” Not-Carlos growls, inspecting and loading his guns with practiced quickness.

“Right, sorry I asked.”

“You said you know where my agent is. Lead the way.”

Daff waves him sideways down an access corridor that breaks out near the gym. Empty, blessedly, no civilians in here ignoring the fire alarms and getting in harm’s way. There’s an access stairwell will take them right down to the boiler room.

“Someone’s coming.” Not-Carlos pulls him back from the door with a grip like iron, dipping into his black bag for one of his shotguns, backing them both up into the gym.

“How can you--” but he hears it a second later, the distant sound of pounding feet. Lots. Hell.

“Take cover.” Not-Carlos shoves him to the side, and Daff obediently folds himself behind the squats machine. Not-Carlos juggles his shotgun effortlessly to his left hand and takes a few steps back, grabbing one of the weight plates from the bench press setup.

Daff has spent weeks watching Carlos do ‘light weight lots of reps’ so he doesn’t get ‘veiny’ and here the man is handling twenty kilograms of iron like a fashionable handbag.

“I’ll draw the guards off. Get McCree out and rendezvous with me at the mud-baths.”

There’s an exit there straight to the culvert where the resort dumps its grey water, and its gently used mud. They’re going out the back way, then.

Daff jerks his chin in a nod and folds a little tighter behind the exercise equipment.

“I walk into the room…” the man mutters, squinting at the stairwell.

The door flies open and a stream of well-trained well-suited gentlemen with guns starts to pour out.

“Purse first,” Not-Carlos says, grinning viciously as he flings the weight plate like a discus fifteen feet across the room and into the crowd on the stairwell. A half dozen of them go down like dominoes, and the first domino in that chain is never getting up again. The sound of the ribs snapping like twigs is going to be with Daff for a long time, if he survives this.

Not-Carlos takes another weight-plate, holding this one like a shield as the guards regroup and take aim at him; he holds it one-handed and unflinching as pistol rounds pancake into it, leveling the shotgun in his other hand and firing it effortlessly.

Sounds like a cannon and fires loose shot. The recoil ought to have had his damn arm off. He throws his shield at the new front-runners, dips into the bag on his shoulder for the other shotgun even as he pumps the other against his shoulder to chamber a new round.

There were maybe two-dozen guards in the charge to begin with, and now there’s only a dozen and a half on their feet. Not-Carlos backs up, laughing cruelly, and fires again, this time at the plate glass window that separates the weight room from the sun garden. It shatters top to bottom and he hops out nimble and heedless of the glass.

Daff wills himself invisible as the guards take chase. They’re understandably distracted by the great pink threat with its great black shotguns, not interested in poking around the fitness equipment. There’s a bad moment where one of them looks his way, but then there’s another shotgun blast outside and the man goes limping off after his fellows.

When the last of them has gone he makes for the stairwell. There’s four guards dead or dying on the stairs. His first instinct is to do triage, despite everything. It’s not a particularly strong instinct, though, and quite easily shaken. Instead he takes a pistol and picks his way over the bodies, pelting down the stairs as fast as he dares. They might’ve left guards on the kid. They might’ve offed him when they first heard gunfire—

\--no, the boiler room is unguarded and no the boiler room doesn’t stink of death. Ennio-- no, what’d the fellow called him, McCree—looks up blearily at him. He’s covered in fire suppressant foam and obviously falling deep into the pit of Volte withdrawal, but he’s coherent. They make them strong, in. In.

In where? They can’t be from Overwatch, this pair, no matter what the news said. That’s insane, no sensible military organization would operate this way.

“What’s up, doc?”

“Your boss is here.”

“Thought I heard hellfire,” McCree says, managing a smile despite the shakes that rack him. He’d better damn well be right that someone in his outfit can fix him, or all Daff will have done was bring back a pretty corpse for the funeral.

“You here to spring me?”

“Yeah.” Daff crouches beside him, metal knee landing sharp on the floor, loud enough to make them both flinch. “Hands apart if you can manage. I’ve got no keys for these.”

The boy obliges, pulling the cuffs as taut as he can. “Careful, doc, I need both of’m to quick draw—”

“You’re lucky you still have either of them, you little wazzock.” The first shot dents the lock mechanism but doesn’t break it; Daff presses the pistol into the metal hinge point-blank and fires again, the recoil of it wrenching at his wrist and forearm. The cuffs fall open, revealing weeping red stripes of lacerated skin—boy’d been struggling hard to little avail. No sign of gangrene, at least, and given the circumstances that's just going to have to do.

Daff blows apart the padlock on the chain and unwinds enough slack for the boy to pull his head out of the top loop, helps him stand up and shiver out of the main bulk.

“Come on, my lad, it’s pore purification and an escape for you.”

“Wha-?”

“Nevermind, let’s go!”

McCree is taller than he expected, making up for his youthful slimness with youthful lankiness instead. Daff half slings him across his shoulder.

“Can’t carry you up the stairs. This leg’s barely rated to carry me. Can you walk?”

“I’m walking,” McCree moans, doing no such thing. Daff groans and takes a little more of his weight, pulling him along the basement corridor at a determined drag.

He gives the stairs up to the weightroom a miss—if everyone’s on the ground floor fending off Not-Carlos and potentially a bunch of Overwatch agents, the sublevels are the way to go. The laundry room is nearly directly below the rendezvous point, and there’s an emergency stairwell that should be open for them. If he doesn’t collapse with a hernia first.

McCree is starting to get his feet under him, somewhat miraculously, and maybe he’s not about to throw out his back and die, all right. They stagger through the laundry room, slipping on spilled detergent, and lurch up the concrete stairs together.

McCree loses his feet again on the last step, spills out of the employee access door and onto the cool tiles that surround the mud baths. There’s a figure waiting for them.

It’s Lyndon.

Daff spits out a blasphemy that’s both curse and prayer for forgiveness in one breath.

“I always suspected your gentler nature would get the better of you,” Lyndon says, sounding bored. He’s holding a pistol loosely, confident and rightly so that he can aim before the two exhausted men can get away.

Daff finds enough strength to pull McCree’s gangly form half back into the stairwell, imposing his own body between them.

“It’s a little late for heroics, Mister Yavuz. ”

More suited figures coming in. Lyndon’s personal henchmen, half a dozen of them.

A shaking hand paws at Daffyd’s waistband—retrieves the pistol he stashed there.

“Keep’m talkin’, doc,” McCree murmurs. The fool’s hands are shaking like leaves, what does he think he’s going to aim at? Daff can hear the click and slide of the magazine ejecting, and then McCree counting softly.

“Who’s heroic? I’m just showing him the amenities. That’s my job, innit?”

“Very amusing. Now come with me quietly and I won’t shoot you, there’s a man.”

“Five… six…” McCree mumbles behind him, and there’s the sound of shell casings hitting the floor. Mad bugger’s unloading the weapon. Who knows what he thinks he’s doing

“I can’t bloody move,” Daff lies fervently.

“Oh, trouble with your leg?” Lyndon reaches into his pocket and pulls out his resort-issue key-fob. “Let me help.”

He hits a few buttons in sequence, and bright white pain shoots through Daff’s hip and back.

Fuck. Fuck, the bastards must have rigged it in. He’d been unconscious in their power often enough. Now he actually can’t move, can’t do much of anything besides lie there and try not to piss himself with the pain radiating from each point of his cybernetic connections.

He’d nearly counted on not being worth it to them, to go through all the trouble of a containment plan. Not worth the cash and labor needed to sabotage him. Disgraced medics must be harder to come by than he’d thought. The pain is ebbing—nerves might just be fried—but now there’s near sixty pounds of metal strapped to him as deadweight and he’s very tired.

“Look on the bright side, Mister Yavuz. You’re about to enter the company of seventy-two virgins, I believe is the story. It’s nearly enough to turn a man from honest atheism.”

“ _Dos I chwarae efo dy nain_ ”, Daff spits.

McCree mumbles something to himself, crawls forward and pushes himself up off Daff’s back, pistol wavering in his hand.

Lyndon tuts almost fondly. His cronies train their sidearms on him.

“Heroics all around, I see. Very good.”

McCree inhales, and whispers “Draw.”

Six pistol shots ring out in quick succession. Lyndon looks at his men, at the clean holes through their foreheads, and there’s silence then except for the bodies falling and the muffled noises of distant combat. Daff gawks at the shivering wreck standing over him, he’s in no shape to hit the broad side of a barn, how did-?

Lyndon lifts his pistol, all the amusement gone from his face, and takes aim at McCree. A pastel shadow moves behind him.

Before Lyndon can squeeze the trigger two hands reach from behind him and cup his face. It’s almost gentle, the way the fingertips lie on his cheeks and jaw, nails sparkling cheerfully with Nacreous Nectarine.

Daff flails an arm to knock McCree down and out of the way of Lyndon’s pistol, and the boy repays him the favor by landing square on his back, so he doesn’t see what happens next. He just hears the gasp, the vertebrae snapping, the pistol falling. Then there’s Lyndon’s body on the floor, eyes unseeing. The sudden smell of piss as his body gives it up, and a pair of pink trainers stepping over the corpse.

“You look like shit, McCree,” Not-Carlos says, kneeling down so now all Daff can see is the knees of a pink track-suit spattered with blood. Not-Carlos hauls McCree off of his back, and Daff takes a wheezing breath.

“You’re perty enough for the both of us, boss,” McCree croons.

“That’s the Volte talking,” Daff says, in the boy’s defense.

“Unfortunately, he’s always like this.” Not-Carlos sighs. “Can you move?”

Daff wiggles his fingers. That’s all he’s got.

“Smart-ass.” And then Not-Carlos lifts him like an infant, drapes him over his shoulder along with the duffel bag.

“Can you walk, McCree?”

“Sure.”

“Aren’t you glad I made you do all those endurance courses now?”

McCree whines, and Daff’s perch judders slightly as the boy hauls himself up on the other side of Not-Carlos.

The blood’s beginning to rush to his head and that’s not at all a bad thing; it makes everything drifty and his aching, inert cybernetic connections feel like they might belong to someone else instead. There’s a bang of the back exit being kicked open, a breath of fresh summery air tainted by the whiff of dubious water.

His survival instincts scream at him from the other side of the haze, something about the way the shadows are falling, and as Not-Carlos lies him down in the shelter of the culvert he looks up to the building across the way and sees her, tucked away in a little nest.

So does Not-Carlos, who waves at her rifle sights.

“Bloody hell,” he whispers. “That’s Captain Amari. I’ve seen her on TV.”

Not-Carlos flicks two fingers toward Daff, and something stings his neck and then everything is blessedly dark.

* * *

Waking up is unpleasant, because he doesn’t know where he is. He can hear things beeping and smell ammonia and his leg is off and he must be in that half-bombed out hospital in France, musn’t he, with the omnics still advancing outside.

“Allo,” a gentle voice calls. “Allo, can you hear me?”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in Zurich, Herr Yavuz. Please try to relax.”

“Sod that, what’m I doing in Switzerland?” one of his arms is strapped down. PVC in him. No. He’s got to get out and back to his unit-

He wrenches his eyes open with a great effort, sees the pristine hospital with the lights not flickering from an assault on the power grid, the doctor hovering over him. It comes back with an ugly rush. The Crisis is years past, and so is his career, and he’s been in the syndicate’s power for most of that time, but—where is he now?

“There,” the doctor croons gently. She’s a rather attractive white woman, and he knows he’s never met her but she’s familiar. No, of course she is—Ziegler, she’s famous, Doctor Ziegler with—

“Overwatch?” he asks, a little timidly because he suspects he’s about to be told he’s insane.

“Yes, good, you remember.” She smiles warmly at him. She’s so young, he didn’t realize she was so young. The articles never mentioned. “You have been unconscious for several days.”

That’s not possible. Why isn’t that possible?

Right, the ninety percent casualty rate is why it isn’t possible. But though the ache for a hit is still thrumming in his bones, he’s not shaking and he’s not dying and most of the nerves not in the vicinity of his cybernetic connection points actually seem to be working. …the connection points are numb.

“Doctor, I’m a Volte addict. I’ll be going into—I already ought to be well into withdrawal.”

Ziegler looks guilty. “I am afraid… not.”

“What does that mean?”

“You were still comatose when the withdrawal symptoms began. The fatality rate as it is, I could not wait for you to wake up and give your consent. I have begun a detoxification treatment.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Not in chemical form, true. But I have been able to utilize a suite of specialized nanomachines that can bind to the receptors involved in the addiction, and a course of anti-inflammatories suppresses the worst effects of the secondary metabolic products of the drug—”

One, that’s brilliant, two- “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing, of course. Even if you had not saved one of our own,” she tuts.

“I don’t trust a free lunch, Doctor.”

“Every living person has the right to effective care. But if it settles your mind we are all very grateful that you saved Agent McCree.”

“He made it?”

“See for yourself.” Ziegler smiles and tugs back the curtain surrounding his bed.

And sitting in the hospital bed next to him, there’s McCree. He’s in good spirits, the wounds on his wrists bandaged neatly. His colour’s healthy and he’s sitting up in bed, fiddling with his arm. It looks like he’s picking skin—no, some sort of skin-coloured bandage, coming off like a snake’s shed. There’s a tattoo under there, being revealed shred by shred, something dreadfully tacky. A skull, Daff thinks.

Daff’d examined his arm and not seen trace of the stuff. More of the Doctor’s miracles? Or have they got a lab just for disguises, too? He realize he’s staring, blinks and shakes his gaze away.

The boy’s wearing a cowboy hat and Daff’s not going to question it. He’s going to be very polite to the people who are helping him not to die.

“Hi, Docs.” McCree waves at them lazily.

“You’ve got the devil’s own luck is what you have,” Daff tells him.

“Knew the Commander wouldn’t leave me to rot,” he drawls dismissively. “Could wish it was sooner, but given it was Petras dragging his feet about it it could’a been worse than five days.”

“Should I be hearing this?” Daff whispers to Doctor Ziegler, since there’s obviously no trusting McCree’s judgement.

She gives him a shrug.

“You’ve seen enough you’ll be in trouble either way. You don’t wanna hear the whole story?”

“I mean—seems simple enough, you infiltrated to wait on the go-ahead for the drug bust, you were caught-?”

“We weren’t there for drugs,” McCree scoffs. “Naw, we were after an omnic trafficking ring.”

Daff’s brow furrows. “…you were in the wrong resort. White Syndicate does bespoke and artisanal drugs. It’s the Shimadas who move omnics, their front was the bathhouse clear across the island.”

“Yeah, we figured that out fast,” McCree says. “Went back to the director telling him the intel was wrong. He said it wasn’t wrong, stay in place. Morrison said it is wrong, we’re taking our guys out, but Petras wanted to fart around with the UN in committee ‘til they could all agree that our intel was shit and we shouldn’t be there. It was going on weeks when the Syndicate made me.”

“Jack has wanted to move on the drug traffickers for some time. We were hoping things would stabilize first, however,” Ziegler puts in. Seems she’s decided it’s all above-board. “Jesse’s capture forced his hand. The UN would not authorize any overt action to retrieve him, since we were not to engage with the Syndicate.”

“They wouldn’t give you permission to save the operative who got caught because they wouldn’t give him permission to leave, who oughtn’t’ve been there in the first place.”

“That is the long and the short of it, yes,” Ziegler says glumly.

“Not the worst thing I’ve ever heard of bureaucrats doing, but close. Suppose I thought you bunch were above that.”

“Well in point of fact—” McCree starts with relish, but Ziegler gives him a warning look and he subsides.

“Later, Jesse.”

“All right, doc.”

“How are you feeling, Herr Yavuz?”

“Bone weary and in a bad way for a fix,” he says honestly.

“That will pass, slowly. It will not be a painless withdrawal, I am afraid.”

“You slept through the worst of it, I think,” McCree adds.

“It’s better than a ninety-percent fatality rate,” Daff says, because it is.

“Or widespread nerve damage,” Ziegler agrees.

“Or that.”

“But if you are tired, I advise rest. First you should try to eat some solid food, and drink something, but after that sleep all you need to.”

She beams at him. Daff remembers McCree saying ‘I know an angel’.

He supposes it’s not much odder than having a cowboy on the roster.

* * *

He spends as much of the next twenty-four hours asleep as he can. It’s only habit, not chemical dependency that makes him crave a shot in the arm—but knowing that doesn’t make the craving any less dire. He has to stop himself from scratching the inside of his elbow or fidgeting.

He hadn’t spent much of the past few years thinking about what he’d do, if he got out from under the Syndicate’s thumb. It’d been too painful. Now the possibilities and the obstacles in the way of said are massively overwhelming.

Could go home. His sister’s family would take him in. He’d have to give up bacon and alcohol again but that’s a small price to pay for being able to retreat someplace quiet. But after that, what? He couldn’t just lie around their house. He’d need work. But with the discharge and the addiction on the books he’d have a snowflake’s chance in hell of working in medicine ever again, and he doesn’t know what he could do that isn't medicine.

It’s a lot to deal with; he welcomes every possible distraction, up to and including card games that end with McCree cheating him out of his jelly cups. When Ziegler has one of her nurse assistants offer him a wheelchair tour of the headquarters, he practically jumps for it, fried leg or no.

He gets a decent sense of how much of the facilities he’s _not_ being shown—a lot—and what’s open to the public is all well-polished and well-branded. It’s not the hospital bed, though, so it’s as scenic as can be.

The nurse—big strapping fellow, Jamaican accent, kind eyes—even wheels him outside, and the air has a chill to it he missed badly during his stay on Isle d’Ivoire. He’s never seen the alps from this side before; it’s so beautiful you could cry.

It’s a bit marred by the great damn statue, actually.

He senses someone moving next to him—the nurse attendant, must be, come to take him back inside. “You get ever get sick of it, looming about saluting at everyone all the time?”

“Since the day they put the damn thing up,” a deep voice says. 

Daff jerks away from the speaker so hard he nearly overturns the wheelchair. That’s not the nurse.

“Sorry I startled you,” the interloper says, steadying his chair.

Daff stares into the photogenic blue eyes of Strike Commander Jack Morrison, hero of the Omnic Crisis, man whose great marble likeness he’s just now been complaining about.

“No problem?”

“Mind if I sit?” Morrison gestures to the empty bench next to his chair, and Daff just bobbles a nod at him.

The man looked big and steady on television, but that’s television, they have editing and makeup for that sort of thing. Daffyd hadn’t expected him to look this—gleaming, massive, perfect? In person. Oh there’s bags under his eyes and a shadow on his jaw that left five-o’clock behind yesterday, but his presence just radiates out of him. Like he exists a bit harder than everything else.

“Commander Reyes and I were hoping to talk to you. He’ll be along in a second, he’s grabbing coffee. Tea for you. I’m sorry, Doctor Ziegler gave us strict instructions about your caffeine intake and there are people on this base I don’t cross.”

“Uh.”

“Christ, listen to me. Mom would tan my hide. I’m sorry,” Morrison says, hopping to his feet again and sticking out a hand. “Commander Jack Morrison.”

“Daffyd Yavuz. I’ve seen you on television.”

“Good to meet you, Daffyd.”

He gets it right, which most Americans absolutely don’t—he handles the vowels in a way that has Daffyd asking “Ydych chi'n siarad Cymraeg?” before he can stop himself.

Morrison shakes his head ruefully. “Just enough to know I shouldn't. I’ve got the Gàidhlig.”

“Suppose nobody’s perfect,” Daff says, and doesn’t add ‘you Scots bastard’ because he’s not sure he’s allowed to joke around heroes of the Omnic Crisis, however personable they are.

A shadow falls over them and this time he doesn’t jump or make any potentially-fatal assumptions about who it is; he looks around, like a smart boy with eyes. He recognizes Commander Gabriel Reyes as easily as he recognized Morrison; they’re each as famous as the other.

Reyes’ face is a little less severe than he’s seen it on enlistment posters. On television Daff had seen him with a neatly trimmed beard, but he’s shaved it down to stubble. The lack of it it makes the gashes on his cheek stand out starker, but it makes him look a bit younger. With hands occupied by a drink carrier full of Styrofoam cups he nearly looks like a normal human, but not quite. He’s got the same whateveritis that Morrison’s got beaming out of him. The bigness. The moreness.

“Commander Reyes,” Daff says, making himself breathe normally. “An honour to meet you.”

“We’ve met,” Reyes says, his voice setting off a dissonant chord in Daff’s memories.

“Have we? I’m sorry, sir, I’d have sworn I would remember.”

Reyes gives him a funny little smile and then his body language changes utterly, his huge presence somehow becoming warm and soft as his eyes go gentle. “Aw, Peaches, but you’re my house therapist.”

“Fuck me rigid,” Daff says, mouth falling open.

Reyes turns into a brick wall of a man again, smirking as he holds out a cup to Daff. His nails are still bloody Nacreous Nectarine.

Morrison snorts, and grins at Reyes like the other man’s hung the moon for him. Daff is treated to the sight of a brick wall preening. The pair of supermen divide their coffees and sit down on the bench, companionably invading one another’s personal space.

“So there’s not a house, then.”

“Like I’d buy some mcmansion in the Hills,” Reyes says witheringly.

“He’s holding out for Indiana,” Morrison says.

“Shut your face, Bloomington.” They both smile as they bicker with each other, deeply fond. 

“Thank you, then. You saved my life,” Daff says. It sounds insufficient and watery.  

“You held up your end. I held up mine. McCree tells me he gave you most of the story,” Reyes says.

“Aye, he did. I don’t know if I ought to believe it.”

“You were in the army. RAMC.” Reyes says it with certainty. “You’ve seen bureaucracy go wrong.”

“Oh, no, that bit I believe. I can’t believe you talked the UN around in less than a week, Commander,” he says, nodding at Morrison.

“Well, Mister Yavuz, that’s my job here at Overwatch,” Morrison says seriously. “Kissing ass and taking names.”

He’s so solemn that Daff doesn’t realize it’s a joke until his pokerface breaks and he shares a sardonic smile with Reyes. Reyes snorts and bumps him with his shoulder.

It’s also not particularly likely that a high ranking officer would singlehandedly waltz in to save a junior agent, but Daff doesn’t vocalize that particular thought. Reyes isn't an approachable man. He’ll just boggle quietly. Maybe the rules bend when you’re strong enough to fire a shotgun single-handed like a popgun.

“It was supposed to be a milk run,” Reyes says, watching Daff’s face as if he can read the thoughts behind it. “Surveillance only. I was there to supervise the kid, I wasn't supposed to be active.”

“Did it make you psychic, that enhancement program?” Daff asks, dismayed.

“No. But I’m observant, and I know you know something’s off. I’ve read up on your career.”

“Oh, have you,” he says dully. That’ll mean he’s seen the end of it.

“Not an uncommon story,” Morrison says, without too much pity in his voice. “I wish it was. You got wounded on the front because you refused to abandon a soldier. Got carved up by an OR14 for your trouble, but saved her life. You came out of the other side of the Crisis with a metal leg, some commendations, and a problem with pain and painkillers.”

“Got caught prescribing yourself the painkillers. Discharged, commendations stripped. Blew the last of your pension trying a detox program at a resort you couldn’t afford, got hooked on an even better painkiller, and wound up under the White Syndicate’s thumb,” Reyes adds, mercilessly.

“That’s the whole of it.”

“You’re not alone. You know things were in shambles after the Crisis—but it’s no excuse. Veterans needed support and didn’t get it. People needed help and didn’t get it. We’re trying to make it better now, but we’re operating on a lot of compromises and prayers,” Morrison says. He leaves an opening in the conversation that Reyes doesn’t fill. Daff realizes he’s expected to say something.

“And?”

“I realize it’s not the best time, when you’ve seen just how dysfunctional Overwatch can get, but… well, consider this a job offer.”

“…I’m still on withdrawal from the finest of narcotics and I’ve a dishonourable discharge on the books. Commander Reyes just mentioned.”

“We’re aware,” Morrison says. “We also know that you shielded one of our agents with your own body, and performed life-saving first aid on multiple occasions.”

“Didn’t get him out, did I?”

“That wasn’t your job,” Reyes points out. “It wouldn’t be your job. Helping him get through the recovery, him and other agents who wind up compromised like that, that would be your job.”

“I don’t know.” Of course he’d love to have the position. He could do good again, make up for the years wasted and the stains his service to the Syndicate left on his soul. But it’s too big a leap to make in one go. The spell of celebrity will wear off when Reyes and Morrison go, he’ll remember he can’t possibly handle this, and then where will he be?

“You don’t have to decide now,” Morrison promises.

The courtyard has emptied out with the wearing on of the afternoon. It’s just the three of them under the statue and the nurse assistant at a respectful distance.

To a man they all flinch when a voice rings across the courtyard: “ _Jack Morrison_ , are you harassing my patient?”

“I’m out,” Reyes says, looking haunted—he slides off the bench cat-graceful and sidles into the cover of the statue.

“Gabe, I thought you had my back,” Morrison says, pretending betrayal.

“Not against Ziegler. This one’s on you.”

“Commander, I should really take him—” the nurse says, approaching tentatively.

“Can’t I wait a minute out here?” Daff pleads, not wanting to give up the open air just yet.

Morrison glances between Ziegler storming her way towards him, and the nurse, and Daff, and then the hero of the Omnic Crisis makes his own hasty retreat. He shoots the doctor a salute and a television-ready smile and then strides purposefully away saying something about a meeting. Reyes comes strolling from the far corner of the courtyard to join him, and how he crossed the distance Daff has no idea. Off the two of them go, like truant schoolboys.

The nurse-attendant retreats to a safe distance, no doubt fearing a dressing-down for failing to safeguard Daff from rogue job interviews. He falls into the best civilian impression of a parade rest he can muster and looks innocent.

Ziegler tuts at her man, strutting past like a drill instructor in sensible pumps, and stops in front of Daff with her arms crossed.

Daff tries to look innocent himself as she gives him a once-over, satisfies herself that Morrison hasn't set back his health by sheer force of personality. Has that actually happened? He'd believe it.

"I am sorry they bothered you. I had told them to wait until your recovery was further along."

"It wasn't a bother. I started it, anyhow. Insulted the man's statue."

"Tsch. Jack hates that statue." She unstiffens a little, dropping down onto the bench that Reyes and Morrison just vacated.

He doesn't miss the way her expression shifts when she takes the weight off her feet, or the discrete ankle-flexes she does to unstiffen her calves. He’s all too familiar with those aches and pains.

From the press briefings and interviews he's seen of her, admittedly mostly about her medical breakthroughs, he'd got the impression she was a bit of a desk-jockey. Nothing against her, but he'd seen her more hovering over computer simulations and overseeing the logistics of humanitarian aid, not on her feet all day as a surgeon as well.

Yet the past day he's seen her as much in scrubs as he has in businesswear. There's a large medical staff, but it's not any larger than it needs to be for the number of agents Overwatch has out in the field, and they must be strained if Ziegler’s filling in herself.

"They keep the medicos busy here, do they?"

She groans eloquently.

He fiddles with the lid of his untouched tea, not sure if he's meant to say anything else. She'll be tired of him thanking her for the work she's doing on him, he knows he’s been effusive today. She's as tired as he is of the whole ordeal, if there's any human frailty at all in her, and it looks as if there is.

"I've a question," he hazards. "About that synthetic skin your young McCree was sporting."

"Yes?"

"Your doing, was it? Damn convincing."

"Yes," she sighs. "It was meant for burn treatment. It is, ah, a liquid gel bandage that encourages the growth of epidermal cells? It can function as a skin barrier where the dermal layer is breached, allows a healthier fluid and oxygen stasis. Very good. But I have not been able to stabilize it for use in the field. Also," she says, in that German way where the word stands in for a throat-clearing. "Mostly now Commander Reyes uses it as very expensive stage makeup."

She waves a hand listlessly, elegant in her despair.

"It works, though. Like I'd not have believed possible," he offers. "I'd examined McCree's arm more than once, didn't see a sign of the stuff. And it hid those beauty marks on Reyes' face."

"I wish it worked that well for actual patients," she says glumly. "And not just for those who can get to this particular facility."

"Always the way." He risks a drink of tea. Herbal, oversteeped, but at least still hot.

"Morrison should not have tried to recruit you," she says a little darkly, thoughts apparently running along a track of 'ways in which military men have wronged her'.

"No ma'am. He means well, but I'm only a combat medic. Not a proper surgeon."

"That is not why! No, I agree with the decision to offer. But it should not be him, because he does not have final authority of my staff. And we do not recruit people while they are still in a hospital bed. We are not _that_ desperate for manpower."

Daff thinks of the size of the medical staff, and the famous Doctor treating random bystanders, and what he knows of Overwatch's activities on the global scale, and he wonders.

"How desperate are you, then?"

"We... that should not concern you."

"All right, Doctor." Tell him they're understaffed and expect him not to be concerned. Not likely.

She tuts again.

"Are you ready to go inside?"

"Not yet. Lovely though your hospital beds are, I'd like to stay out here a little while."

"I do not blame you. Andrew will take you in when you are ready. Do not over-strain yourself, especially your leg. The muscles and cybernetic implants are still very sensitive."

"Yes ma’am."

She gives herself just another moment off her feet, watching the afternoon light on the snowcapped mountains, and then whisks herself away. The click of her heels fades behind him, leaving him with his tea and his thoughts.

Bit of a circus, is Overwatch, he thinks. Like the proverbial swan, all impressive and serene on top and ungainly flailing underneath. Nobody's said it in front of him, but it's all in the air, in quiet conversations he’s half-heard from his bed; the organization wasn't ready to take on the Syndicate and the other high-end drug runners. They're stretched in all directions already, anyone who keeps abreast of the news knows that.

Still, they moved on the Syndicate. They got Daff out. He knows they didn't do it on his behalf, but the fact remains he'd never have gotten out under his own power, let alone have a chance of getting off the drugs.

And all of it for a junior agent. The two highest ranked commanders went to bat for young McCree-- Morrison with the pleases and thank yous in the boardroom, and Reyes like an avenging angel on the ground. It's unheard of. It's absurd. But who else would have come for McCree?

Who else would have come for Daff?

All these hopeless causes Overwatch is over-committing itself to, who else would champion them?

They need manpower. Not just heroes, like the posters say, but hard workers. Support. And Daff wants to do something he believes in again. There's others like him out there, he's never been under any illusion. The crisis left so many shattered castaways.

He glances up at the statue, saluting nothing as hard as it can with its punchable earnest expression.

"All right, you buggers. You've got me."

**Author's Note:**

> Another work inspired by Coelasquid? It's more likely than you think. 
> 
> Poor Daffyd. I needed an outside perspective to properly appreciate what a chameleon Gabe was, and it turned into a bit of a bad day for him.
> 
> Belatedly, some translations for mobile users:  
>  _Dos I chwarae efo dy nain_ , which Daff swears at Lyndon, is 'go fuck your granny'.  
>  _Ydych chi'n siarad Cymraeg_ is 'Do you speak Welsh?' in a formal 'talking to the hero of the omnic crisis' tone


End file.
